The Phone Call

true name. But Frank has a good reason for keeping his identity private in the name of protecting others. So here's Frank insert air quotes. My parents, Well, my family, both sides of the family, came to this country around the turn of the last century early, so my grandparents were all born in the United States. My parents were born here. I was obviously born here, and my grandparents were Their parents were very prosperous that people who came

here were very hard working and industrious. My father's father went to college and graduated from college, and my grandparents were all very affluent. Um, but my parents, both of them, we're like, we're like a regressive generation instead of building on the prosperity of their immediate ancestors. Both of my parents were like first generation immigrants. They neither one finished college.

My father didn't even go to college. He was intrigued by a wealthy uncle and wanted to just skip to success. And uh, that was really not a good recipe for him. And um they got married very young in their early twenties, and they struggled. You know, they were choices and uh, shortsighted choices. And by the time I was born, they were married about two or three years. We were living in the Tri State area. You know. I remember we lived in like garden apartments, you know, not fancy, and

uh we lived in one place. When I was in kindergarten, we moved again. I mean, I maybe I was the wrong kid to move a lot, because I take a lot in I'm very aware it can be hard to move around a lot as a kid. You can feel kind of unmoored. You become attached to a place, and then through no choice of your own, you leave that place. And Frank's dad kept changing jobs, so it keeps happening

for Frank, along with his younger sister and brother. For Frank This constant moving around forms a key aspect of his character, one that will serve him well later in life. He becomes hyper aware, with a keen almost sixth cents

about people and places. I just remember, you know, this awareness is like all these parallel lives, all these every town has a school, where school district, and you know every town in school is going through its own sort of you know John hughesesque high school experience simultaneously in parallel all over Long Island, over Westchester, or over New Jerseys, the same music, the same experience. You go to the same concerts, but separately. But when you don't move, that's

your world. And you think that's that is your world. Yet when you move at kindergarten in the third and then the six, none of them are your world. This might be hard to imagine for anyone listening who say under a thirty Today kids grow up with all of this connectivity. They know there are worlds other than their own.

And while that connectivity, the way we're attached to the hip to our devices, definitely has a downside, it also has an upside, especially in families in which secrets are pervasive. But back then, when Frank grew up, it was hard to break through that sense of isolation, a partners a loneness. Your family's world, your town's world, your community's world. That

was the whole world as far as you knew. So Frank's upbringing, while making him hyper aware, also makes it hard for him to get close to people, because, after all, relationships don't last, not when you keep moving. What was their relationship like your parents, I wouldn't say it was particularly warm. They've gotten warmer, by the way, and more expressive in their old age than they ever were that I remember growing up. I don't remember a ton of affection.

I don't remember hardly any emotional conversation. And I just saw them recently and it's always light la la, superficial stuff. There's no depth that know. They don't want to talk about heavy things or emotional things that aren't necessarily even heavy. You know, the weather, about what other people are doing, very little um personal conversation. Ever, when Frank is in the ninth or tenth grade, the lack of warmth between

his parents becomes something else, something harder, murkier. They've moved all over the Tri state area around New York City, and at this point his father is commuting a pretty sizable distance to work each day to a better job. He's making more money, but life isn't getting better. In fact, it's getting worse. And the family is pretty isolated because Frank's father has shoved away his own relatives always because of unspoken petty grievances. It went from you know, it's

some extra time to commute two. All of a sudden, late nights, things were like chugging along normal suburban existence, and all of a sudden, you know, it's like ten o'clock o'clock, and you know, my mother's anxious, upset, standing by the window, looking out the window, pacing, and um, you know that that creates anxiety in the in the house. And you know, we have school the next day and I am by the way at most fifteen sixteen. You know, my sisters like nine and my brothers in between. He

would come home eventually, and uh, they would argue. They would fight, where were you? What? Why are you home still late? Why didn't you tell me? And that's unsettling to hear, you know when you're really wide awake in your bedroom. Were worse awakened by stuff like that? And um, it was a lot fast, and you know it's in a family that doesn't really talk about emotions. It was confusing. It was the most emotional thing I'd ever experienced, probably

up until then. And um, all I remember looking back is how incessant. To God, it seemed like it grew into I mean maybe it started off you know, a day a week, and then it grew into like a constant thing. And there were just these arguments night after night after night, and then yelling and name calling and and it was horrible. And you know, it's it's really abusive to have nine year olds and twelve year olds

and you know, sleeping the right listening to this. I mean, I know couples have problems, but there's a time and a place and that was neither. And I remember talking to my mother one day, was very upset and saying, you know, why are you guys fighting all the time? And what's going on? Like why can't you, like naively, you know, worked this out of fate? What's going on? And I remember, I mean I remember where I was standing, like, I remember, well, because there's things going on, I said,

what's going on? I said, well, what do you think? I said, how hell do I know what's going on. I'm just I'm just listening to idiots fight all night, like enough already, and she's, well, there's another woman. And I didn't know where to go with that. By the way, my guess is if I had really listened to the fights, I probably would have known that by now. And maybe

I did know it on some level. But hearing it, especially from you know, your parents, who you never spoke to about anything emotionally or of substance ever anyway, was jarring. And uh, all I remember, you know, is that was that persisted through high school. I don't remember anything other than that fighting. And then I left to go to college. And uh I went to college, and I didn't think about that for one second, not a minute. Did you go far away? I mean, did you try a feeling

miles away? I didn't even visit the school. You know, back then you'd get a brochure in the mail and type your application and send it off across your fingers. But it was it was it important to you to get away. I like the idea that it was different, and I liked the idea that you know that thirty two kids in my class, which is about two five kids went to one state school. I'm not going to school with thirty two people. I just spent less, you know, four plus years with I liked the idea that no

one was going there. I mean, I, yeah, I might sing a pattern now, yeah, you know, it didn't occur to me that I like, I got to get out of here. But I did. And I wanted to change and I wanted new and I got it. I really did. And um, what's funny, We're interesting. I remember going to college and totally compartmentalizing and blocking out these fights and all this horribleness. And I mean, Danny was the night after night after night after it's it's it's torture. I mean,

you know, it's funny. At one point, I said to my mother when I was still home, you gotta leave. Why are you doing this? He's not he's not. It's not working. Like, get get out, Let's get the funk out of here. Like what are we doing here? I can't you don't understand. It's complicated. Let's take a quick break here. There were other family fights going on at the same time. Frank's mother used to fight with her

mother on the phone. He would hear the two of them going at it all the time, more anger, more rage that he constantly overhearing. During his childhood and adolescence, he used to want to walk into the kitchen, take the phone out of his mother's hand and hang it

up because he just couldn't take it anymore. I will say that my mother, who really is is not the perpetrator in any of those stories, is the professional victim in a way, like how she could those that same conversation with my grandmother countless times for years and years I'll never understand. And then to gets stuck in a it's her own with my father in that dynamic. It's horrible And I don't know why she took it where

she felt so powerless, but she obviously did. I don't want to say I resented her for it, but it angered me that she was not stronger. So now we're talking about you're in college. Now I come home to visit and my you know, my sister and brothers still live in the house because they're here in high school or middle school whatever, the same things happening, And I think, oh my god. Still every night, every night he goes to work, she it's turns dark. She's standing at the door,

pacing upset, everyone's in their bed. He comes home, and the same two person play plays out, you know, from ten to midnight, like like like it was the first day, like I never left. Frank's now out of college and one day he needs to borrow his dad's video camera. This was in the early days of video cameras, when they took VHS cassette tapes, the era well before smartphones. So Frank's dad sets out to show Frank how to

use the camera. Frank calls this a normal sea moment, you know, like backyard barbecues or shooting hoops or eying board games. Normal, just something any father and son might do. So in this normalcy moment, I remember him showing it to me and how it works, and he had to put a tape in it. And he had a tape in it, you know, and he's like, you hit play, you know, and you know, you just record and then you can go back, and a video started to play.

I think he thought that the tape was probably blank, and it was well. I remember is like a kid, like a young boy playing on a lawn, and I thought it for maybe five or ten seconds. He got completely flustered, so I thought it was mine, let me see that, and you know, took it, took a camera triad off and fiddled with it and wound and did something and I thought, whatever, dude, Like, so there's something on the tape, Like it didn't occur to me that it was his or it was a secret or I mean,

I thought, what are y'all jumping about? Like the reaction seemed odd? And I remembered it, and yeah, and you remembered it. It stayed with you. Yeah, because I you know, I think, Um, I've developed this thing for it's not even conscious. Um, I'm very tuned to people's behaviors, patterns, the way they do things or say things, not consciously. I don't have a list, but when you change course, when you're not consistent, when you're speaking oddly, or something's

out of your pattern. Despite the senses tingle, I think for people from whom a tremendous secret has been kept, develop a kind of sixth sense, some sense of there's a heightened sensitivity because you don't know that there's a secret. I mean, that's it wouldn't be a secret if you knew there was a secret. There's just this feeling of hyper vigilance or UM observing very carefully the piece is

not necessarily totally adding up UM. And then I think in retrospect those moments, like the moment with the video cassette, become AHA moments. It certainly wasn't an AHA moment as you were experiencing it, but later, yeah, I filed it away. And by the way, I didn't try to develop the skill. I didn't know I had the skill. I didn't know everyone didn't see and perceive things the way I did. But I now know. You know that I have a

hyper subconscious awareness, two patterns, two behaviors. You know, it's funny you don't want to watch a movie with me because I can spot that formula. There's nothing unintentional in a movie. So everything they say and do that seems meaningless or an ocuous is not. It's a It's a plot device. And I'm like, oh, he's gonna get locked out of his house when they focus on the keys, being like, there's a reason for all that stuff, And yeah, I think this was the this is the byproduct of

this UM. I mean, my mother told me in part with the one little factory that she knew that you know, this fighting and CoML was you know, the result of an infidelity, but there was still so much lying and manipulation and emotional abuse happening, and uh, you know, you sit up, You're sitting in your bed in the pitch black, and you hear it all, and you hear at night after night, and you know, all of a sudden, You're like,

I'm hearing inconsistencies in the story. She's not picking up on it because she's sobbing and yelling, but I'm thinking, well, wait, you didn't. That's not what you said two nights ago. It's a rough way to develop that skill. So fast forward into Frank's adult life. He becomes an attorney. His skills as an interpreter of people's patterns and behavior serves him well in his career. He marries, has three kids, his parents still together, incredibly, moved to Florida, and sort

of settle into a calmer life. The violent fights have been reduced to squabbling, but with a mean edge to it. Frank doesn't see them too often. One day, literally, I'm sitting at my desk like life is just normal, and that stuff is very far behind me and very distant in my mind. The phone rings and it's my sister and she's like, hey, we need I need to talk to you. And she said, I got a call and uh,

I don't know what to do with it. I said, well, what are you talking about out and she's like, well, you know all the stuff we talked about growing up and all the fighting and all that other stuff. I said, yeah. She's like, well, I got a call from our half brother and I said, why who? I am unaware of a half brother. I'm like, what are you talking about? She says, well, it seems that all those fights and all those like nights, it wasn't just an affair. It

blossomed into another family. I said, and there's a son. She says, no, there are two. And I laughed because it's insane news. It's unimaginable. It changes your entire reality in a moment, and it's not even just one. And I needed a moment to just like process, like, okay, let me shut the door and you can tell me, like what are you sure? Like you don't know where

to go with something like that. And uh. She told me this story how this guy kid called her and you know he's younger than us because he was born when we were in high school. And uh, the short version is this is the older son. He uh speaks to my father and sees my father fairly often. And he said to my father one day, you know, you're getting older, and what happens, like you know if if you were sick or you died, Like, how would I know? I need to speak to my siblings and find out.

And my freaking father's like, yeah, call call my daughter because she's the most understanding. I'm like, they didn't think I would understand. I don't want to call me by the way, probably pick the right person. But you know I went from like stunned and almost laughing to like kind of anger. So your half brother calls your sister and introduces himself with your father's permission. Yes, and and but but my father does not have the balls to to to make the call himself. First of all, that's

a cowardly move. Your this kid, your your your secret half, your secret son wants to speak to his adult path siblings and you decide with him which one is the best to approach, and then you let him do it. That's offensive. And she's like, you have no idea. The conversation I had with this like we thought we had it bad. He had the reverse, you know. He the times that Dad was home, he wasn't there. And that woman who concocted a whole story. See, they didn't know

there was another family. They thought he was busy and traveling and at work. Hold them. So your father, who was pretty ineffective in a variety of ways in life, you know, professionally, that kind of saying as average or below, as running the mill, unexceptional as you get, except as someone who managed to have two households, each of which didn't know about the other. Correct, How did this half brother then know that there was another family with other siblings.

He's like a like a criminal investigator, which I think is hilarious because part of him calling my sister might have been about, you know, just were in contact in case of theing happens to my father. I think the other half, for maybe more than half, was he actually wanted some answers, and I suspect he wasn't getting them

from my father. And now, now keep in mind, now we're in the age of social media, and it's not hard to find people, and it's not hard to find people with your last name or your proximity, especially if you're a criminal investigator for a police department. So then what happens, Frank, how do you process? Does your mind go back to that VHS cassette tape. Absolutely, And it goes back to why why he wouldn't stop the behavior?

You know, he would lie and connive and promise, but he had a house with two babies, so he's not gonna stop. And by the way, so I mean so I my sister explains all this to me and gives has a lot of details because she's spoke to in length, and I said, this is a huge bromb this, this is not okay. And um, first of all, I don't really I know this kid who called is innocent in this.

You know, he didn't choose it, he's I don't begrudge him wanting to know his full story because he had an even more bizarre He also lived in the household lies just different lies, and maybe they weren't fighting, but he saw his father very not often less than we did, ironically, So I don't want to meet him and I don't want him to be in my life. And I wish you didn't exist. And while I don't, I begrudge him nothing. It doesn't work for me. So I said that to

her right away. I said, I'm not interested. I'm not talking to him, I'm not meeting him. And my sister said, yeah, yeah, me too. I didn't believe at the time, although I think she's come around to that, and um, I said, we have to talk to are that about this? Like this is not okay? And I thought about it for a long time. And you go through a lot of different feelings, you know, those stages of grief, truly, anger, denial, bargaining. I mean, you really do go through that. What would

you say you were grieving? I thought those days and those feelings and those scaps were behind me, if not healed, closed at least, and like an alien just showing up. Like I'm telling you, your reality change is in an instant. It's very disorienting to think you know the world today and receive a phone call and find out that humans exist that don't fit with your story, blood relatives and they're alive and they were and it's and that's the reality.

It's the difference between like the language, like when my when I found out that my dad hadn't been my biological father. I was describing it as something that happened to me that I discovered that, you know, that I wasn't who I thought I was, literally, and I realized I had to change the language because it wasn't something that happened to me. It had always been thus like it it was me, and that, I think is part of what's shocking and disorienting when you uncover a secret

that because it was the reality. You didn't know it was the reality, but it was for a very long time in your life. Yes, And I feel betrayed and deceived because of it. And I never trusted people that much like when I I. Most people give people trust and then people can lose that I I don't distrust, but I started out at zero. No one gets credit in advance, and that was formed long before this phone call. The phone call lets me to work where it came from,

even though it wasn't always conscious. We're going to pause for a moment for a word from our sponsor. Frank tells his wife the story because, as he puts it, that's what couples and healthy relationships do. But he feels sick about it, embarrassed, as if somehow this reflects poorly on him, and then after sitting on it for about

a week, he calls his father. I said, this is not okay, it's not He says, look, life is complicated, and you know, all I could say is you you know, you have needs, you take actions, you do something and you think it's one thing and it turns into something else, and all of a sudden you have this. And I said, yeah, maybe for one kid, not too. Two is not an accident. One is like, oh my god, what happened. Two is a family you know, fool me once too unforgivable, unacceptable.

He's he's bullshitting me. He's he's selling me. You know. They say, hey, man, you know you think it's one thing. No, at some point you were in when you were when you took that fucking video camera there to film your son's you know what you were doing Owen, by that point it was not unintentional or an accident. So don't tell me that that crap. I mean, my my whole life and career is about sussing out full of ship people. And he's he's, you know, patient zero in in full

of shitness for me. So I'm imagining that that conversation like doesn't particularly and with some kind of like great closure for any anybody. No, it doesn't, and I'll tell you how it ends. He says, Look, you know your mom. I don't think you want you know, you should burden her with this and it would be a lot for her. And I realized, my mother, and I'm gonna say this intentionally, may not know. He thinks she doesn't know. She may know, she may have a video camera story in her head someplace,

or she may not want to know. And I said to him, stop, I will talk with her about this or not because of my relationship with her. Don't ask me to do something or not do something, because I'm more likely to do it to spite you. So stop selling me. And here we arrive at the reason, or at least part of the reason why Frank is using a pseudonym for this episode. His mom, as far as this part of the story goes, is innocent. Also his kids. He doesn't want to be the guy who suddenly doesn't

speak to his relatives the way his father did. He's refusing to allow his father to turn him into a version of himself who he hates and disrespects. So he doesn't say a word to his mother or his kids. Five years go by and Frank's daughter wants to go to Florida to see her grandparents. There's a Pink Floyd concert that Frank wants to see what's happening in Florida at the same time, So he tells her, you know what, I'll come with you for the weekend. We'll see them,

I'll go to the show. Then his dad catches wind of it, and he says he wants to go to the show too. He knows the venue, knows all the guys there. At first, Frank recoils, but then I thought, again, am I being that guy? You know? Again? I have a reason why I can't see my father, and I don't want to be him, you know, So I think I'll give it. How how bad can it be? What could go wrong? So, um, we go to this this concert, and uh, it's fine. He knows the people at the

in the parking lot, he knows the ticket takers. Because the guy who thinks he's antisocial is you know, the schmoozer. He knows everyone. He's connected, and it's it's a it's a real conflict between you know, how he describes himself and how he acts. We go to the concert and uh, there's an intermission and we decided to go and get

some walk around and go to the bathroom whatever. And as we're walking up the steps to leave the arena, it's like, oh, this is a you know, a client of mine, some local guy for now, and that he knows. He's like I. Guy was like, hey, how are you doing man? And my fathers like, hey, how you doing it is? Let me introduce you to my son. And he introduces me, but not by my name, by the half the older half brother's name, and he doesn't realize. He doesn't and he just and the guy's like, hey, hey,

nice to meet you. And they just chit chat for a minute or two, and I am stunned, like like the arena got quiet, you know, like that device in a movie where it's just you, like the camera zooms in and all and everything fades to like a hush, and you're like, like time stood still, and you're like where do you go with that? And I thought another test, you know, And I said to myself, I really consciously thought this, I'm not going to get freaked out by this.

I'm not gonna let this ruin this night for me. I'm letting this one go, and he says goodbye. The whole transactions like two minutes and we walk into the arena and it's a really nice guy. I said, yeah, and wrong son. He's like what I said, I'm Frank. You introduced me by Southern aid and he turned red

and he looked bewildered. I've never seen maybe the only other time I saw that face was on the video camera, you know, when he was fumbled and grabbed confused, you know, the two worlds all of a sudden overlapped matter and antimatter, and he did and he looks so bad. I've never seen that expression. I mean, did I don't think. I said, yeah,

you did, And anyway, let's go. Oh no, I mean, I mean he's he's a great kid, and you know you shouldn't be I mean as it stops speaking about it and don't mention it again, old man, And that's it. And we walked away. Throughout our conversation, Frank's embarrassment that this this is his family, this is his father, this is where he comes from, is palpable. He so badly

doesn't want this to be his story. He got out, he moved away, he built his own happy, successful life, and then this new piece of information, shameful information, as Frank experiences it, has crashed in like a meteor, and he's now carrying around this story like his own secret. Is this why he doesn't want to tell his kids or talked to his mom about it? Embarrassment? Shame? First of all, it's not my secret to tell her, it's his. So on, that's that's my rationalization to get me off

the hook. Now that I know this piece of information that I don't want to that, I don't feel I should even be the one to tell her. And I don't know that you'd want to hear it from me, But I wouldn't want to hurt her. She's the one who never left, and she's the one who still lives with this guy. I don't want to wait, the sleepwalker. So Frank puts this whole story somewhere inside him, or at least tries to file it away. He doesn't think about these two half siblings of his. He doesn't want

to have anything to do with them. It's not their fault that their father had two families. Intellectually Frank knows this, but that doesn't matter, or at least it doesn't matter enough, so he doesn't think about this all that much, to the point where when he does one of those over the counter DNA tests, it doesn't occur to him that wait for it, guess who showed up in the database. They think you're their half cousins or whatever. And my kids are in there under my account, My sister is

in there and her son. I had to, uh, I shut it all down. I stopped the sharing, I broke the connection. I did other than quit the service. I shut anything down that makes a connection or shares information or shows names. I stopped sharing with any relatives or anybody because again, you know, the virus and showed up again. Did it occur to you that that might happen or did that not into your mind? I didn't think about it. That's so interesting. I never thought about it. So there's

this way. It strikes me that the way that you have managed to metabolize this and kind of just move on with your life is to just bring down. It's something bigger than a curtain, and it's like the bring down like a big thick concrete wall, like it doesn't exist. It shouldn't have exist did, so therefore it's not going to exist. So you would have been able to do something like submit your DNA to a commercial testing site and actually not think, hey, wait a minute, there's this

world genealogically out there that could be complicated. Yes, because it's the same compartmentalizing when I went to college the first time and came home and said, what this is still happening? But of course it was. I mean, why wouldn't it still be happening. So in a way that compartmentalizing has served you well, I think so. All right, So I have one more question. So you said before you said this great thing, you said, I'm glad. I know. I wish it didn't exist, but I'm glad. I know.

Why are you glad? You know? Well, because it's reality. I'd like to thank Frank for trusting us with his story today. Family Secrets is an I Heeart media production. Dylan Fagan is the supervising producer, Lowell Bolante is the

audio engineer, and Julie Douglas is the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd like to share with us, you can get in touch at listener mail at Family Secrets podcast dot com, and you can also find us on Instagram at Danny Writer, and Facebook at Family Secrets Pod, and Twitter at fami Secrets Pod. For more about my book, Inheritance,

visit Danny Shapiro dot com. For more podcasts. For my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,